


Tales of the Wild Empire

by DrowsyAthena



Category: Original Work
Genre: Adventure, Adventure & Romance, Amputee Princess, Attempts at an Arranged Marriage Foiled on Account of Gay Princess, Casual Sex, Dragons, Dwarves, Elves, F/F, Friends With Benefits, High Fantasy, Kings & Queens, Lesbian Princess, Lesbian Sex, Moderate Violence, Nudism, Nudist Dragon, Oral Sex, Orcs, Public Nudity, Shapeshifting Dragon, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Sword Lesbian, casual nudity, epic fantasy, they meet eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-16 18:07:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29211648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrowsyAthena/pseuds/DrowsyAthena
Summary: A dragon defends the wilds from an invading empire and a princess struggles to find purpose in a cold kingdom.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character, human/dragon - Relationship
Comments: 10
Kudos: 22





	1. The Dragon and the Princess

The dragon soared into the night sky, high, until her darkened form was visible against the full moon to those below her. They looked up, and the moment was frozen.

Then she descended, and it was all moving again. Moving much too quickly.

Crossbow bolts soared through the air, past her as her serpentine form twisted and turned towards her attackers, the trespassers in her territory, the lands she was meant to defend.

She turned up, just before she hit the ground, and she rushed her attackers, the grass splitting underneath her while her body didn’t even touch the ground. Her tail struck the sides of two armored soldiers, her claw reached out and she slapped another way, and finally she opened her mouth up wide and a gong-like sound sounded off, the air around her mouth rippling like water. The soldiers were thrown about, shouting, crossbow bolts shooting into the air and raining back down.

She moved again like a whip, crashing through the soldiers, finishing them all off until there was just one. The commander, who, while he was alone, he still had his sword and shield in his hand, and he was still going to fight. To the end.

Human honor. It was such a strange thing to decide to die over. He shouted at her to come. She snorted. It was kind of funny, but he wouldn’t think so. She opened her mouth and the air twisted in front of her and struck into the chest of the soldier, hard enough to drop him.

She didn’t like to play with her prey, but the humans were annoying in the way that they kept bumping against her protected territories like they owned it. Like they were going to conquer them.

No, it was more than just annoyance. It was infuriating. She had lost friends to humans over the centuries, but never more than in these last few years.

She was going to start having to make some examples of these fools. Big ones.

He slowly picked himself up, back on his feet. She watched him, unblinking.

“Fight fair, serpent! Fight with honor!”

Now she blinked. She didn’t know what to do of that request, save one thing, and even then, that would not be enough for what he wanted.

Still, he might think that it was.

She started to shift. Her form shrank and changed shape, consumed in light until it was all finished. Until she was a shape somewhat resembling human, but that description wasn’t accurate, as she was able to take this shape long before she had even met her first human and they had revealed themselves to be her least favorite species of pest.

A better description of it was more factual. She was completely naked, with legs and arms and hands and toes. Her fingers ended in black nails, sharp like claws. Her skin was a rich golden shade marked with azure freckles. Her hair dark blue, flowing freely all the way to the small of her back. She was tall, past six feet in height, and well-muscled, with a flat chest and brown nipples. Her eyes were cool blue and slit down the middle, and her smile bore two fangs like serpents.

She walked over to the man, who froze at her nude form.

She spoke in a soft voice that sounded a like a river in some unimaginable way. “Who are you to ask me to step down and give you a fair fight?” She asked him. “I do think that if you want a fair fight, it should be you to put in the work, don’t you? Ascend, you lazy imp, and get better. Get good enough to face me as an equal but do not dare ask me to step down to your level. Don’t insult me like that.”

He charged in. She held her hand out, and he was on the ground before he could even swing at her. The sword finally flying from his grip.

She walked over to him, stepped on his chest plate and pressed down until her foot left an indentation. “I am going to let you live, but you need to send a message back to whoever keeps sending you into these wilds,” she said. She pressed again and he gasped out for air. She wanted to make sure that he wasn’t going to interrupt her. “These lands are under my protection, and you may not have them. You may not have the ground, the skies, the trees, or the water, and you may not harm any of the peoples within those places, or else I might decide to get truly violent.”

He swallowed.

“Will you leave these lands and deliver the message, like I asked you to?”

He nodded, terrified.

“Good. Now, I am feeling generous. I think I might just carry you over to the edge of the wilds myself.

He gasped out a sound that might have been a question if he was allowed to breath.

She changed her form again, back to a dragon. She scooped him up in one hand, and she took off, spearing into the sky. The man finally screamed during the ascent, but he fell unconscious in the middle of the flight.

Princess Bri watched from her throne on the side of the one that her parents both shared as the soldier was brought in by more soldiers. He looked disheveled and afraid, like he had seen hell, and he insisted that there was something that he needed to say, and that it was urgent that he said it to the King and the Queen.

Aside of her, to her left, was her handmaiden, Eilee. She was sometimes called the Princess’s left hand, which was a title that Bri used to think was rather cruel, before she had grown so close to her handmaiden. Now, she accepted it, like she grew to accept the reason.

The soldier walked up and saluted the three nobles before he started. Then he told his story, how they were making good progress against a force of elves, managing to force them back into the forest, and how they were about to claim their victory and set up camp before everything went to hell.

A dragon showed up and laid waste to the entire advanced force. Some retreated, but everyone who stayed to fight met their end at her claw.

And the soldier made absolutely certain that he made the point that he suspected the dragon was a her, describing the beast’s naked human form in extreme detail and presuming the serpent’s gender from that.

Finally, after fixating on the fact that the dragon was now naked and beautiful and stepping on him in a way that Bri would admit was rather intriguing to her, personally, he got to the message she sent with him.

Upon hearing it, the King and Queen were silent for an uncomfortable amount of time, before Bri heard her father finally speak up.

“We can’t take this,” he said. “We have to retaliate.”

Bri was disappointed in her father’s reaction to this, but not surprised. His first reaction to most things outside the walls of his kingdom was to throw more soldiers at the problem, even if the end result was probably going to be having less soldiers.

Still, he had a lot of soldiers. He had enough to solve the problem of a dragon, probably.

It still didn’t feel right. It felt pretty reckless to Bri, but she didn’t say so. Father was going to do what he wanted to, and nobody was going to convince him otherwise, even if the best option was probably the simple one of just leaving the angry naked dragon alone and finding some new land to expand upon. She didn’t know why he was so fixated on this land besides the fact that some other beings already lived there.

The meeting was soon called to a close and her father had moved to his council in order to start mobilizing the kingdom’s forces.

Bri walked over to her mother.

“Do you think this is a good idea?” She asked.

“The dragon killed our men,” the Queen said.

Bri immediately wanted to point out the fact that their men were in the forest killing elves, but their lives didn’t really tug at the heartstrings of her parents like humans with swords did.

She looked for another way to express her concern. “Maybe it’s not tactically wise?”

“Bri, you learn how to use the sword and now you think you’re a tactician?” The Queen asked, and the progression from one thing to the other probably made more sense in her head than it did in Bri’s.

“I’m just saying... a powerful dragon gave us the chance to walk away without any further bloodshed and father wants to go with the bloodshed anyways? I don’t think that that makes sense.”

“Would you like to tell that to your father’s own face?” The Queen asked.

Bri would prefer not to. He didn’t take criticism well. Or at all.

“I thought not,” the Queen said after Bri was quiet for a long enough time. “If you’re finished with whatever you’re trying to do, I have my own business to attend to.”

Bri thinned her lips. “I guess I am finished talking,” shesaid.

“Good. I believe you are excused of any duties for today,” the Queen said. “I would use the time to center yourself. It would be best for you if your head was where it should be. The expansion of our empire. It will one day be yours, after all. It would do you well to take an interest in your future.”

“I am interested, mother,” Bri said.

“Then act like it. It can be better. You can have more. You just have to take it. Have a little ambition,” she said, placing her hand on her shoulder. Her left shoulder. “Nothing is gained without the ambition to take it.”

Bri bit her lip and nodded. “I’ll try and do better,” she said.

“Good. I’m counting on a change in attitude next time I see you.”

Bri was planning on her attitude being just as sour, but in a different way, so she had that to look forward to. “I will try,” she said.

“Good. Goodbye, Briette.”

Bri cringed at the use of her full named but still nodded. “Mother.”

They parted ways.

“You tried, milady,” Eilee said.

“I don’t think that I really did,” Bri said. “If I did...” she wouldn’t have backed down so easily. “Ugh, it’s like talking to a wall. Or punching one.”

“Would you like a bath, milady?”

“Please?”

“I will prepare one for you,” she said, opening the door to Bri’s room.

“Undress me first?” Bri requested.

“At once, milady.”

Bri stepped up to the mirror and stood still as Eilee undid the various superfluous strings and loops that adorned her ornate dress. Dismantling it was an entire process, and once it was down and piled up at her feet, Bri breathed in a deep sigh of relief. It felt good to finally be free of that thing, and not just because of how claustrophobic and locked in that today’s latest fashions made her feel.

The thing that she hated most about her dresses was that they always tried to conceal her stump of a left arm with them. Trapped as a child by an elven witch and then cursed while in her clutches with a slow acting, flesh eating spell, the surgeons could only save her by amputating her arm halfway above the elbow. It was an adjustment at first, but one that she was able to make, even if her parents preferred for the fact of the matter to be hidden under dense layers of fabric. It wasn’t something that stopped her from becoming the absolute best fencer that she could manage. An absolute fiend with the rapier, if she was only saying so herself.

Now, naked, there was no hiding it. She preferred it this way. She would go to court like this if it wouldn’t cause a scandal, or an uproar, rather.

Eilee understood this, and was more than content to provide company to an unclothed princess, like the true friend that she was.

“I’ll draw your bath,” Eilee said, bowing and moving to the next room.

“Thank you,” Bri called out as she walked over to her bed and sat down, and settling her hand on her lap, looking down on it and sighing.

She felt so powerless in those courts. Like she was nothing but decoration. She wanted to do so much more, but nobody respected her save for her handmaidens. Especially not her parents.

This kingdom was meant to be hers, eventually... but she just couldn’t see that. Not with the way that her parents treated her, and the courts. They would hold on to power for as long as possible, and only let her inherit it if it was the last possible option.

Which in spirit, Bri didn’t mind that too much. She didn’t want to do what her parents did, at least not how they did it. She wanted to change things and... things didn’t want to be changed.

What really hurt was how little they thought of her by continuing to promise her the future they wanted for her while at the same time making it obvious that they didn’t think they were going to get what they wanted from her. They wanted her to be more of a wolf than she was, but she wasn’t, and they didn’t want to hand the power to anyone that wasn’t ready to start biting and clawing their enemies.

Bri didn’t think that was the right way.

She kept thinking about this, thinking in circles where she felt bad, she thought of how she might be able to fix that, and then she felt bad over it all over again. Again, it was like punching a wall.

“Your bath is ready, milady,” Eilee called from the bathroom.

Bri paused. It took a minute for her to get out of her head, but once she stood up, she was incredibly ready for the bath. She needed to take her mind off of the day, and off of the dragon her parents were angering.

She walked over. “Thanks again, Eilee said said, and her handmaiden smiled. She gently helped Bri into the tub and lowered her into the hot bath water. Bri put her head back, closed her eyes, and smiled.

There was, at least, some peace to be found.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thank you to The_Blue_Fairie for being the one to first pique my interest in writing a high fantasy and helping me come up with some of the first ideas and to OliviaThinksSheCanWrite for helping with the title!
> 
> This story got kind of out of hand in my planning so... there’s going to be a lot of it lol


	2. The Garden and the Twins

The next day, Bri had needed something else to help her get out of her own head. To help time move forward while her father’s armies moved forward needlessly into the dragon’s wilds.

When Bri was smaller, she had asked for a garden to tend to, a little private place that was filled with life and entirely her own. Her favorite space, a small court with a small fountain, with a wide array of flowers, room to walk in, and thanks to some enchantments, it was well-lit even in the night.

Now, tending to her flowers often got away from her, but Eilee still often made the time to ensure that nothing died under her watch. Bri still used her private garden court though, and frequently, but not for the intended purpose.

When her and Eilee had walked in and locked the door behind them, Bri let her maid undress her, then she moved to where she hid the swords. She started training against the air, at first, while Eilee watched and watered the plants and pruned the hedges. She went through the exercises that her instructors had taught her, now more free from the confines of her clothes which, even in the outfits that were made for her to move freely in during lessons, were needlessly stiff and ornate.

Bri had to wonder if the idea of clothing hadn’t been so utterly complicated by living in this palace, if she would be as enthusiastic about her nudism as she was right now.

She thought back to her first days of practice after she had lost her arm, and how she needed to adjust her center of balance. How everything felt off and nothing felt right. It was a massive adjustment for her, but the parts of that that always upset her a bit was how her parents treated that adjustment as if their discomfort was equal to hers.

Nowadays, her missing an arm above the elbow was natural to her, she rarely thought of it, and she didn’t feel the slightest bit bad about it. At least, she didn’t feel bad about it until one of her parents accidentally made her feel lesser for it.

Accidentally, because Bri wanted to assume that they didn’t know what they were doing when they said something hurtful around her. Being the King and the Queen, they were used to throwing a lot of weight around and not giving a lot of thought about where it struck. It was... frustrating... all of the time, but Bri could still hide in her garden and practice with her rapier, her foil, and her sabre, and it was almost like nothing else outside of this courtyard even existed.

“Fantastic work, milady,” Eilee said as she sat down on a stone bench to watch Bri.

“Thank you, Eilee,” Bri said, falling out of stance and turning to face the maid.

She didn’t ever feel naked in front of Eilee. Firstly because Eilee was such a sweet, accepting girl, and secondly due to the fact that, in the past, they have been prone to taking certain... extra measures together in order to relieve the stresses of being a princess and being the princess’s handmaiden. It was an irregular occurrence, but greatly appreciated by both parties involved whenever it had happened. If yesterday had been any worse for Bri, she would have probably woken up beside her handmaid in the morning. If this information ever gotten out, it would cause quite the scandal throughout the kingdom. If she could explain that this was a casual thing where romantic feelings weren’t about to bloom anytime soon, that probably wouldn’t help matters, either.

She didn’t think her parents would actually mind that she occasionally slept with her handmaiden so long as she never got caught doing it. Bri couldn’t collect any proof, but she was pretty sure that both of her parents were in the middle of at least one affair or another at any given point in time, and they were both aware of that about the other, so they were hardly two to judge if their daughter wanted a little bit of casual sex with her best friend.

“Want to have a go?” Bri asked.

Eilee looked to the swords on the bench and picked up a rapier to match with the princess’s. She walked over and stood across from the naked woman and raised her blade to an opening stance. They took careful steps closer to each other and tapped their blades together.

What followed was hardly a duel, and was closer to two close friends playing swords with each other. Eilee had a good amount of training with the foil, but neither of them really wanted to show off to the other. They were just finding a new way to blow off steam that involved pointy metal and pretending to buckle some swash. Of course they both ended up jumping atop the stone bench and slashing at each other with a blade meant for jabbing, shouting out “En garde!” and “Avast!” as if they were little girls again, playing with sticks.

Time got away from them and soon they were sitting on that bench, side to side and exhausted, both of them breathing heavily and laughing to themselves.

Bri wished things could always be like this. She wished that she didn’t have to leave the garden and head back into the rest of the palace and play witness to the wildly disappointing real world.

But she had to. She had to be responsible. She had to find some way to take the power back for herself.

“Eilee... help me dress, please?” She asked.

The handmaiden nodded, still smiling. “Yes, Milady,” she said, and they both stood up and got to work.”

Numa and Fori ran through the forest, chasing each other, alternating quickly between who was in the lead. They were laughing and pushing each other as they moved nimbly over rocks and brooks and fallen trees. Their laughter rang through the forest as their naked elven forms scampered through the trees.

They were loud. Maybe a bit too loud.

There were eyes in the Wild, and some of them belonged to some rather hungry creatures.

A drake watched them from the treetops, waiting to drop down and to feed.

Numa caught her brother by the shoulder and she pushed him down. He fell, rolled, and then sprung back to his feet. He was about to take off after his sister, charge her, tackle her to the ground, but then the call of the drake screeched overhead. A shadow fell over them, and grew as its wings expanded. It swooped in lower, still screeching as the twins were paralyzed with fear.

The drake reached halfway towards them before it was snatched out of the sky by a larger figure, a gold and azure scaled dragon, wingless but in full flight with the wind splitting by the speed of its movement. She took the drake in her teeth and whipped her neck, throwing it against a tree hard enough for there to be splinters.

The drake recovered itself and hissed while the dragon remained calm and quiet, staring it down. She was giving it a chance.

It didn’t take that chance. Fire welled up in its chest and smoke started to stream out from its mouth.

The dragon shot forward like a coiled viper, and bit one more time, sharp teeth, straight to the neck. The drake fell dead, and the elf twins stared down at its limp body as the dragon looked down at them.

“Th-thank you, Songh,” Numa said, and immediately her brother repeated after her, “thank you Songh!”

Songh shifted form again to one closer to that of the elves’ own.

“You two should be more cautious,” she said, still looking down on them. They were a great deal shorter and smaller than she was, and her gaze upon them diminished the twins even further.

“We’ll try, Songh,” Fori said.

“Head back to the village, children. The Wilds aren’t safe anymore. There are too many humans out and about.” She said ‘humans’ like it was a dirty word that she couldn’t wait to get the taste of out of her mouth.

“You took care of them,” Numa said.

“For now. They will be back. They will always be back. They always fight hardest for the things that they cannot have.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re humans,” Songh said. “Dung beetles roll shit and humans stir it up.”

The twins laughed.

“What will you do if they come again?”

“I suppose I will eat well,” Songh said.

“Ew...” said Numa.

“True. They aren’t exactly the tastiest game out there, and there is that issue with texture...” Songh said.

“That’s not what I thought was gross...” Numa said.

“Do you know what elves taste like?” Fori asked.

“Sweeter, but no less squishy,” Songh said with a sharp smile, showing some equally sharp teeth. The smiles on the two elves vanished for a bit, and then Songh laughed. “I would never eat you two, of course,” she turned and started to move away. “Come on,” she said.

“Songh?” Numa said.

“It is a long way back to your village, especially with drakes and humans lurking about. I would walk the both of you back home, if you would let me.”

Numa looked to Fori and her brother nodded back at her. They both followed her, one on each side.

“Can you fly us there?”

“You would fall,” Songh said. “And besides, I need to stretch these legs.”

They walked on, mostly in silence, though the twins tended to argue and push and shove each other. Songh was unbothered. She rather liked these two, even for all of the trouble they almost got themselves in.

She stopped on the outskirts of the village, as she didn’t want to go through the trouble of any more hellos. She knelt to the kids and said, “And more troublemaking has to go on here, by your home, until I tell you that it’s safe, do you hear me?” She asked.

The twins nodded. “We hear you,” they said together at the same time.

“Good. Now at least try and behave, both of you. I hear about all of your troubles, and you wouldn’t want me visiting in the dead of the night to have to punish you both, would you?”

“No, Songh,” Numa said.

She ruffled their wood brown hair and stood back up to dwarf the elves, turning, walking away and shifting back to her draconic form before shooting up through the canopy and out of sight.

“Race you back home!” Numa said, pushing Fori back onto the ground and running away.

“Hey! Cheater!” Fori called, getting back to his feet and sprinting off after his sister.


	3. Obligations

It was dark in the Wild. Wisps lit the night for those without the gift of night vision, but Songh walked unimpeded by the dark in her bipedal form.

It was a stroll. She wanted to take a walk and feel a bit smaller than she normally did. To take this place in.

She never wanted to tell it to the other denizens, but she was beginning to think that she wasn’t going to be enough. She wasn’t the only defense of these Wilds, the elves themselves were formidable, and the other creatures in the forest pushed back hard whenever too many humans set foot into it with ill intentions. The drakes especially got rather ravenous at their scent.

She considered flying off, calling for aid from the orc tribes hiding away, or the cyclopes in the desert. The centaurs didn’t much care for the forest, cramped with trees, where it would be difficult for them to run freely like they did on the plains, but certainly they would be sympathetic to the plight of this forest. They’ve thought their fair share of wars with the humans, and lost too many.

She wanted to, but she didn’t feel like she could leave the forest for so long at the risk of barely accomplishing anything. In the morning, she would plead for the elves to send out emissaries, but they were slower on the ground than she was in the air. It would take them days more than it would take her, and they might not have those days before the tides of man washed at her feet again.

She wanted to stand amidst the forest, longer, and in peace, just one more time. She refused to believe that she could actually lose it, but she knew that when this was all over, it would not be the same. The beauty she was experiencing now would be disturbed, burnt and broken, and the humans would call that a victory.

It made her chest burn. She was not of the type of dragon who could breathe fire, but if she could, flame would have shot from her mouth in that moment, just to let out the rage that has been quietly burning in her since the humans first came to this land and claimed it as if it had always been theirs. Entitled to it because it was there, and they could see it, and because it didn’t already belong to any other human empire.

A growl escaped from her chest. She was going to keep fighting. This was going to be years going forward, but she would keep fighting until she was taken out of the fight, or until she finished it herself.

Songh had her eyes and her thoughts set on the King and Queen. She had a minimal understanding of human politics, but she got the feeling that killing them might not be the end to it, that it might simply stir the empire to push forward with a vengeance. Still, it was nice to think that all of these problems could be solved by one flight over to the city and back, with a quick meal in between. She always wondered how royalty tasted, now was as good a time as any to find out.

She breathed in the clean air and she slumped her body as she exhaled. She missed peace. She would do anything just to slumber in her grove for a few weeks at a time, again.

She put her hand on a tree. She would be lying if she said that she knew one plant from the other, but she still appreciated it for being her. For being part of the forest, and part of the Wilds. Songh didn’t know how much longer each section of this forest was going to last, whether the humans would come in and start burning down entire swaths at a time, so it felt right to her to say her hellos and potential goodbyes.

She knelt down, hand on the dirt, and she closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she was once more in her draconic form, claws sinking into the soil. She lowered, her muscles clenching, then she pushed up, taking off into the sky, bursting through the canopy.

Afloat, moving with grace, she looked off to the horizon and she saw the mass of camps they had. She felt strong, like she could take on the world, and she sorely wanted to single handedly drive them away, but she was no fool. As powerful as she was, diving headfirst into the enemy encampment, where they were most fortified, where they were all gathered, would be a fool’s errand. She would almost surely die, and then the forest would be left vulnerable to whatever army next came, and there would most certainly be another.

For as long as there was land that didn’t belong to humans, there would be those who thought it was their duty to take it, and to call it a glorious conquest.

Songh lowered herself back into the forest with a dive. The only glory they would be involved in would be the glorious way she would send them to their afterlives.

She landed hard and then returned to walking, now on all fours, her tongue flicking from her lips to taste the air. She ought to have a talk with the elves now, finally.

Bri woke up and Eilee’s arms were around her. Her chest was to her back, and her chin was on her shoulder.

Bri slowly wriggled herself out from her grip, and her handmaid woke up in the process.

“G— good morning, milady,” she said, smacking her lips.

“Good morning to you, too, Eilee,” she said, stretching out her arm. “And it was a very good night, too. Thank you for that.”

“It was my pleasure, milady,” Eilee said, stepping out of bed and beginning to dress.

Bri quite liked Eilee’s form. She was rounder, softer, than herself. Bri rather wished that she was more inclined to nudism than she was right now. She would have liked to appreciate that form of hers far more often, but this was probably the fact that she had just woken up from a wonderful night with her and her head was more than a little fuzzy with those kinds of thoughts. Within the hour she would be thinking more clearly and she would only see Eilee as her best friend. As great as these nights were, the two of them seemed rather unable to form romantic feelings for the other, though they had both certainly tried at the beginning of this arrangement. They both eventually came to the conclusion that the sex was great but they were also under no obligation to form a relationship out of it.

Eilee was fully dressed now, her gentle curves hidden by the frills and the puffs of her dress. She looked as if she hadn’t just left the outfit bundled on the floor. Bri didn’t know how she did it but it was certainly a rare skill.

Eilee then aided Bri in getting dressed from an outfit picked out and prepared for her last night and stood behind her at the vanity while she did her hair, and Bri did her own makeup. Going through the process, mechanically and only half thinking, she slowly began to remember why it was that Bri had laid a kiss on Eilee’s cheek last night and led her to the bed. There was a banquet, today, in honor of the latest push into the elven forest in the eastern Wilds. Their men had probably not even reached the front of her parents’ “war,” but it wasn’t a banquet to celebrate any victory, rather it was a multi pronged effort to inspire confidence in the nobility and to bump elbows with a few their more powerful benefactors, not to mention a few esteemed guests being the royals from other neighboring kingdoms.

All of this would be annoying enough if not for the fact that her parents would be trying to marry Bri off, again.

Bri thought that she had made it entirely clear to her parents that she was gay and how she was interested exclusively in women. This seemed to have fallen on deaf ears because the king and the queen were interested in heirs and the ruling families of the other kingdoms seemed only to be interested in sending her sons.

To be fair to those princes, most of them were understanding enough that she could come out to them and they would return to their parents and make up a soft lie about how they weren’t compatible. One of the princes was also gay, and that was a wonderful time as they both related as to how they were expected to wipe away that fact of themselves because it was more convenient to their parents’ ulterior motives. She would have rather liked to be set up with him one more time, just to talk again, and there were indeed times where she thought about marrying him so that they could both enjoy a sexless marriage with some mutually agreed upon affairs. It was probably her only option at this point, since no princesses were about to be sent her way.

Then there were the princes who actively were down on the marriage immediately, on account of her arm. They didn’t want to marry a broken princess, which was fine by Bri, because she did not want to marry an asshole. It was all she could do to shut her mouth and avoid causing an international incident those days. Still... at least those days were more eventful than others. Fun, even. She liked having people around that she didn’t mind being mean to. It was fun, to her, to see how close she can get to outright insulting someone without them noticing. If you were of noble blood and you weren’t used to not being in a room that was filled with people who would go out of way to compliment you, it turns out that you can get pretty close with them.

She wondered what today would be like... what kind of guest would be seated by her side.

She finished with her makeup. This was only for the time leading up to the banquet. There was going to be an entire new wardrobe change coming up beforehand, where she would be covered in even more layers of insufferable fabric. This was about as comfy as she would get from here on.

“Are you ready milady? Long day ahead of us,” Eilee said.

Bri nodded. “I am about as ready as I will ever be,” she said, then stood up. Eilee moved to open the door for the princess, and Bri corrected her posture as she walked out into the rest of the real world.

Long day ahead...

Songh had to shift forms in order to fit into the long house, where the leaders of this elven village, the biggest one in this sprawling forest, almost a city to rival those of the humans in and of itself, gathered. Not only the leaders of this village, but so too were the leaders or emissaries of the neighboring tribes here, too.

The point was already made that elves would be sent out, to the other races of the Wild, to ask for aid. They would be sprinting from the village by the time that this meeting had ended, even.

Now, the time was to discuss war.

“We are at an advantage so long as we remain in this forest. The humans cannot fight as well as we can, or see as well as we can, here,” said the war chief, clad only in accessories, like all the other elves here, eschewing what humans would describe as ‘practical clothing’ entirely.

“That much is true,” Songh said, turning to him. “But you are ignoring the fact that the trees do not mean so much to the humans as they do to the elves. There is little stopping them from changing the battlefield to one that more suits them and their war machines, save for the lumber. I think it is only a matter of time before the humans bring axes and saws, or worse, flames to the edge of our forest. It is the land that they want, not the life living in it.”

Grumbles of agreement.

“We may have to take the fight to them,” said another warrior from a neighboring village.

“That provides its own risks. It leaves our homes vulnerable and it puts us in their element. We’re trapped,” yet another voice said. Songh didn’t much appreciate the hopelessness in their tone.

“An example needs to be made. We must raid one of their camps.”

“An example has already been made,” Songh said. “And they ignored it.”

“I hear you saying there is much we couldn’t do, but I do not hear you making any suggestions,” the first war chief said.

“That is because I do not have any to make. I am not a warrior, or a tactician. I am a dragon, and I want to return to living my life like a dragon, and not in these war rooms. I will fight for you, and for the safety of the Wild, but my wisdom is perhaps not the one that you are looking for. I will work in the direction that you will, however, even if it might be... unwise.”

The tone that she had tended to take around so many esteemed elven elders was one that she could only use by the grace of her being a dragon, as well as quite a bit older than most of them, even if a lot of that age was spent in a state of slumber. She had respect, here, and none of it was begrudging.

There was silence. The leader of the village stroked at her chin. “A decision cannot yet be made. Not tonight. Cool heads need to prevail, and we are awaiting the return of some scouts watching at the camps. They will tell us what they see, and we will decide from there. Until then, this meeting is dismissed.” Murmurings, none of it sounded to pleased, and then the leader made eyes to Songh.

Songh strode over to the old elf woman. “Things are in a bit of chaos, Tenii,” said the dragon.

”I am afraid that will be how it stays for a long while,” Tenii said. Her hair was shock white and, though she aged with the grace befitting of an elf, she was beginning to show signs of the decades beyond just in the weight of her eyes.

”We’ll see the end of it,” Songh said.

”I am not sure that there is an end,” Tenii said. “There will always be more. We will always be defending the Wilds from something else, much bigger than the last thing, and I think that eventually it will catch up to us.”

Songh didn’t say anything. She had the same fears.

”I wonder if there will be a place for us in whatever world comes after the humans...” Tenii mused.

”Maybe we should save those thoughts for later,” Songh said.

”Perhaps. Still, the sky grows darker...”

”Take it from someone who has been there. The sky is as beautiful as it has ever been.” It was the workings below that always felt so dark.

Songh reached a clawed hand and gently set it on top of Tenii’s head, stroking through her hair and down her face until her soft fingertips were on the elf’s cheek. “Things will be better. We will have our hundred years of peace.”

”I hope you are right,” Tenii said, her own hand touching the back of Songh’s, which dwarfed her delicate elven fingers. She was smiling.

”I am. I always am. Now, if you will please excuse me, I need to rest before my next feast.”

Tenii smiled. “I would see you here again, soon.”

Songh backed away with a smile. “Then it would serve you best to send me a reminder.”

She left the building and knelt, shifting back into draconic form in the middle of the village while the onlookers watched and the children gasped. She took off into the sky and she looked towards the setting sun.

At least she would always have the sky...


	4. Something Else Needs To Be Done

It was night. The twins should have been sleeping. But the noises in the distance... it wasn’t loud, but the nature of those noises was more than they were able to sleep through.

They weren’t close. Not close enough for them to be in immediate danger, but it was still on an approach. One that would be halted, they knew it, and they knew it because Songh had already met the humans. She would drive them away, the twins were certain of that.

But... until the noise was over, and until they knew that Songh was flying away from it alive and unharmed, they would not be comfortable sleeping. They felt like they were within an hour’s span of having to be rushed out into the village to hide in the forest.

Numa slipped herself out from the covers of her bed and moved quietly over to the window, pulling away the cloth and looking to see a red glow in the forest, with smoke rising above it.

“Oh no...” she said.

“What is it?” Fori asked.

“The humans are using fire weapons. They’ve brought fire into the forest,” Numa said. “This is going to kill trees...”

“Our parents have talked about this to each other a few times,” Fori said. “They knew this was going to happen, eventually.”

“I know... it’s just sad to see,” Numa said. “I just wish... I wish they would go away and leave us alone. All we want is our home.”

“That’s all they want, too,” Fori said.

“Numa looked over to her brother, who was still under his covers, but wide awake and looking straight up. He was afraid, too. He was just trying to hide it and look brave for his twin sister.

“They’ll be gone, soon,” Numa said. “Songh is going to eat them all up.”

Fori didn’t reply to her.

Numa walked over to her bed and sat down. Things were deathly quiet except for the sounds that the humans were bringing with them.

And then, the crack of sonic thunder that came from Songh’s magic.

She felt comforted hearing the dragon, but... she just wished it would all stop, soon.

Songh opened her fanged mouth and a wave of sound erupted from it. It was like the air was being pushed away, just for a moment, and the flames started to vanish. They would be replaced, soon, but this would give her the time to thin the numbers of the invaders. Like a sea snake swimming, she moved through the air agilely, mouth open and taking a soldier between her chomping teeth, and clawing at another within reach. Her claws cut straight through the armor, into flesh.

She was ferocious, but she was not bloodthirsty. She did not thirst for any of this, but the humans seemed to, and she was all too ready to serve them what it was they were asking for. She would give them the war that they wanted to.

Arrows wooshed through the air, but they were not the humans’s. Elves emerged from the trees with swords while others remained hidden in the shadows, sniping the humans. Naked warriors charged and cut through the ranks of the human soldiers, aided by their dragon ally.

They would win the night.

Songh roared one more time. This time it was in triumph.

Bri looked down at her meal, because it was a little less awkward than looking to her side, and looking at her date for the evening.

Firstly, whoever arranged the seating had this horrible tendency of arranging it so that whomever was Bri’s incompatible date for the event at hand would always be on the side where her arm was missing. She didn’t so much mind this in practice, but the sheer amount of times it had happened in a row had made it a major annoyance to her for whatever reason.

The second reason was because her date, her neighboring prince, was one of _those_ princes. The sort of prince that let their nobility cloud their head. More than just cloud their head, actually. The cloud became solid and swollen until it became the only thing that was in that thick skull of his.

Vapid, to say the least. Bri didn’t suspect that he was actively a bad person, but he was most certainly an ignorant, clueless person. It wasn’t really that much of a permanent bother for Bri, considering that the fact that she was so extremely a lesbian would eventually put a stop to whatever matchmaking their parents had in store for them.

What it was, for the moment, her trying and failing for the first few courses of the meal to find a place where the two of them had anything, literally anything, in common with each other so that they could talk for a little bit and help the time move on more quickly before she could get him alone and let him down as gently as she possibly could.

That wasn’t how it went. How it went was that most of her own interests didn’t really mesh with his. Sword fighting, however, was a common ground. It was a common ground between her and most princes, actually, but there was this common thread of them taking one look at her, at her gender, and the fact that she was an amputee, and simply not believing that she was a “serious” sword fighter, whatever they even deemed that to be. This man, named Hull Malwether VI, was one of those blockheads. He didn’t even think that Bri could cut her own steak, let alone swing a sword, and this meant that the absolute best part of this specific attempt at an arranged marriage for Bri was going to be when she said her goodbyes to him after turning him down, and sitting alone knowing that she would, hopefully, not have to deal with him again.

She didn’t wish him ill... yet... it’s just that he was much like talking to a brick wall. She had tried to speak to him, and it yielded typical results. She would ask him about himself, and he would go on for much longer than was necessary, and then she would decide that she would like to talk about herself for a little bit, and then that would somehow miraculously remind him of something else about himself that he also wanted to talk about.

It was... tiring. He was very tiring...

As she forked a bit of boiled potatoes into her mouth and chewed, she considered whether it would be too soon for her to proposition Eilee for another night in bed. Eilee would understand and be more than up for it, especially considering that Bri made sure to always reciprocate, and generously. It’s just that all Bri wanted right now was the peace that was having her handmaiden’s cheeks slide against her thighs...

She put her legs together.

“What are you smiling about, milady?” Hull asked.

“Just a thought,” Bri said, though admittedly, it was a thought that she could almost feel, and it felt really good at that...

“Hmph,” Hull went, a noise that sounded like he had just barely held off from calling her ‘silly.’

The dessert course couldn’t come soon enough...

Songh was in her bipedal shape, standing tall amid the ruins of the human forces. They had retreated yet again, but this time Songh hadn’t left any survivors, and the elves weren’t taking any prisoners.

Anyone still alive was put out of their misery.

Songh took in the sight around her. Burnt trees, burnt grass, dead bodies, and many of them were elves.

This was what it looked like to fight back against the humans on their own terms. To fight a war with them the way that they wanted to. That they were prepared for.

This was not how the Wild was going to win.

She had to do something else. She had to put a stop to this. She just didn’t know how...

But she had to do something. Something other than this.

A single idea came to her mind. It was a desperate one, and it took her away from the Wilds, yet she was desperate, herself, and she needed to try something...

She turned to the nearest elf. “You will need to hold the line for my return,” she said. “You will need to be strong without me, but I do plan on returning, and quickly, with the key towards our protection.”

“For your return? But what are you doing? Where are you going? For how long—”

Songh didn’t let the elf finish. She bent her knees and leapt, transforming back into her dragon form midair and breaking through the trees into the sky, sailing over the forest, towards the edge...

Towards the kingdom...

“I hope you understand,” Bri said to Hull, in her garden.

“I... understand. And your secret is safe with me... it’s just that I could have sworn you were given me signals.”

Bri maintained a smile. When it came to coming out to princes, Hull was being exceptionally understanding for the kind of prince that he was. Not only did he apparently understand, but he also didn’t show the typical relief of not having to wed an amputee. It might be praising the bare minimum, but she supposed that she at least owed him an easy process of letting him down.

“I’m... sorry... if I gave you that impression,” she said, touching his arm. “Thank you for being understanding.”

They shook hands and had an awkward embrace before they were led again through her room and out into the hall. Bri and Eilee were alone again, waiting only seconds before the handmaiden began to undress the princess.

Naked again, and on the bedside, Bri had her legs open to Eilee, and gave her the best bedroom eyes that she could muster.

“Eilee?” She asked, letting the handmaiden’s name hang in the air for a bit.

Eilee smiled down at her, hands on her hips. “That’s twice in a row, then?”

“It’s been rough,” Bri said.

Eilee shrugged, made sure that the door was locked, and began to undress herself. Naked herself, she got onto her knees and crawled between Bri’s legs, very deliberately sliding her cheek along the princess’s inner thigh in a way that always made her shudder.

“Thank you, Eilee,” she said, putting her hand onto the handmaiden’s head, running her fingers through her hair. “You’re always an amazing friend to me.”

“I try to be, milady,” Eilee said, and Bri bit her. Bottom lip at the feeling of the handmaiden’s breath between her legs.

She kept her fingers in Eilee’s hair, stroking as Eilee began to lick, and then to penetrate with her tongue. Bri’s eyes were closed, and her breathing halted, just for a moment before the waves of pleasure overtook her. As she was moaning, she had mostly forgotten the banquette and her “date” with the prince, and she was able to ignore that there would be more in the future, not to mention a stern talking to from her parents very soon on.

She closed her legs very lightly against the sides of Eilee’s head, and pulled her own head back, drifting off into a different state of mind... soon to be lost...


End file.
